head to head · open source
huginn vs skywalking-java
huginn has 49,969 GitHub stars, 4,299 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. skywalking-java has 925 stars, 691 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. huginn leads on adoption by 5,302% (49,969 vs 925 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; skywalking-java is written in Java under Apache-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, skywalking-java 75%. huginn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| huginn | skywalking-java | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 925 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 691 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick skywalking-java if
- You want the skywalking-java feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and skywalking-java fits your workflow better
About huginn
Huginn is an open source system for building agents that perform automated tasks online, written in Ruby and released under the MIT license. Its agents read the web, watch for events, and take actions on the user's behalf. Internally, agents create and consume events that propagate along a directed graph, which means one agent's output becomes another agent's input and a chain of small steps can be composed into a larger workflow. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem and is distributed as an official Docker image or installed locally from a forked repository.
read the full huginn overview →
About skywalking-java
skywalking java is the Java agent for Apache SkyWalking, aimed at teams that run Java microservices on cloud native, container based architectures and need native tracing, metrics, and logging for their projects.
read the full skywalking-java overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or skywalking-java more popular?
huginn has 49,969 GitHub stars and skywalking-java has 925. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and skywalking-java free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and skywalking-java under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and skywalking-java?
huginn is written in Ruby and skywalking-java in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, huginn or skywalking-java?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (49,969 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose skywalking-java if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.